Abstract
A NUMBER of charming dialogues are to be found in some of the English song-books published in the seventeenth century. The majority are of a pastoral nature, some are biblical, others elegiac. The reason for their popularity at that time was one of fashion, for pastoralism, because of its artificiality and remoteness, always seems to have delighted sophisticated societies, at some times more than at others, but especially in the hundred years following Tasso's 'Aminta (1573) and Guarini's 'Pastor fido' (c. I58I). Both represented the culmination of a Renaissance tradition (which began in imitation of Virgil's Eclogues and through them of the Bucolics of Theocritus), inspiring Fletcher's 'Faithful Shepherdess' (c. I6IO) and Jonson's 'Sad Shepherd' (up to I637). And such works as Spenser's 'Shepherd's Calendar' (1579) and Sidney's 'Arcadia' (I590-98) immeasurably enriched the literature of the age of Elizabeth I, at the same time reflecting the direction in which cultivated minds turned for their diversion.I
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